For a moment I'm going to use two basic opposing concepts to delineate the boundaries of something that is far more complex than the summation of simple oppositions. And as a matter of fact this has become a sort of intellectual habit of mine anyway.
The time has long since come for everyday discourse to abandon the traditional conceptions of freedom and constraint, and plenty of thinkers and activists have already done this. In public schools and commercial spheres, the unfortunate students and consumers are taught daily that freedom is the mere absence of constraint, and so upon the establishment of this binary hierarchy, freedom becomes the ultimate good to be sought after by the self-interested actualizer, while constraint is the ultimate evil that descends amidst laziness and/or criminality.
Countless writers and thinkers have already touched on positive freedom - as opposed to negative freedom - in order to posit a less vapid and destructive notion of freedom. With positive freedom, one is free to enter into community and connect with others, for example, which is often opposed to the neoliberal and libertarian propaganda that urges white men to simply shrug off constraint, forgoing that bothersome commitment to community in return for individually concentrated material power. What I'd like to touch on this time though is spiritual freedom.
In spiritual pursuits, it is often the case - paradoxically so - that hard constraints are what give rise to the emergence of spiritual freedom. If you think about this for a couple of minutes, it makes a lot of sense, and the paradox easily melts away: through failure, impossibility, or inevitability, one is deprived of action in a certain sphere, and so one is forced to give up entirely on those related pursuits.
As countless mystics have pointed out long ago, it is the appearance of an apparent paradox or contradiction that often illuminates the yawning reality behind language and symbol.
It is probable that much of the confusion arises from various conflicting motivating impulses and desires. If one desires to be materially free to pursue a whole variety of material goods and ideals, then one is in a sense constrained to organize one's powers and circumstances in order to achieve those ideals, and secure those goods.
Material freedom arises out of the abilities made possible by the localized concentration of material power, power which must necessarily be taken from something else. Through this type of freedom, one is necessarily constrained by the modalities that are required to sustain this freedom, and additionally one is constrained by the antagonism generated when one power extracts power from another.
For example, if I want to be free to pursue information on the Internet, or drive across the country in a car, then I am constrained to work for perpetual access to the material resources necessary to carry out that freedom. In the case of a society characterized by a highly specialized division of labor, this would require permission to access those resources - money in this case. Unless of course I wanted to mine all of the resources required, and then manufacture them myself into the working products.
And of course this material access to material freedom is dependent on external factors as well. Pursuing information on the Internet requires a commercial and political atmosphere in which that activity is possible, and driving across the country requires free passage across that country as well.
If one the other hand one desires to be free of unnecessary and/or destructive material desires and motivations - if one, in other words, wishes to be spiritually free - then it is much easier to be barred from ever pursuing those attachments and motivations which make material freedom possible in the first place.
If the chances are sufficiently low that one will become a millionaire or billionaire, for example, one gives up on pursuing profitable opportunities, and is spared all of the agitation, frustration, and competitive stress that come with those activities. One feels free because one no longer wants, as Buddhists have long since taught.
That global and visceral desire to fulfill an ideal, upon melting away, releases oneself from the bondage of all of the small and large impulses to pursue that ideal in the material world. But conversely, if one allows oneself to become bonded to the ideal of the spiritual adept, one becomes constrained in many material ways, but then is awarded with an open spiritual space in one's life path, free to pursue all of those spiritual goods unimpeded by material distraction.
This is not to say that all material freedom is a distraction. Some material freedom is necessary for spiritual freedom after all, such as good food and water, relative physical safety, a quiet space to pursue spiritual matters, and etc. In the end, it depends on what the overriding motivations and desires really entail.
